WoW reads your hard-drive

Found on The Inquirer on Thursday, 15 November 2007
Browse Software

In the past WoW's Warden functions could be checked by third party gamer software which could make sure that it did not get out of control.

However the latest Warden patch includes a different random cryptographic hash function in every copy, apparently used for cryptographic key exchange.

This makes it impossible for the third party software to work and, according to Onwarden, is a security hole in its own right. A hacker, or even Blizzard itself, could use it to retrieve information from a computer at random.

All it would take is for Blizzard, or a rogue employees to decide to have a look at a punter's computer and they could do it.

The fact that the new Warden patch makes it impossible for third party software to see what Blizzard is up to means that it is almost impossible for users to tell what is going on.

I wonder if you can do anything about that. The interesting question here is if a company can legally get full system access like this, even if the EULA covers it (not everything in an EULA would win a legal fight). Besides, as mentioned, this is a pretty high security question. Especially if you follow the news about backdoored government systems, stolen userinformation and similar problems. What if someone else has access to Blizzard's system and now happily sniffs around on the PC of every player?